New Trump campaign manager: We’ll never have the money that Hillary Clinton’s team has

AllahpunditPosted at 1:31 pm on August 17, 2016

Why not? The guy’s worth $10 billion, right? He could have liquidated 20 percent of his assets, blitzed Hillary with a national ad campaign and the best ground game anyone’s ever seen, and given his nationalist fan base a meaningful chance to capture the White House this fall. This is what’s so maddening about fanboys like Hannity sniffing around for #NeverTrumpers to blame. Between his (alleged) wealth and his media megaphone, Trump has some of the most formidable advantages a Republican presidential nominee has ever enjoyed. Having watched him squander those advantages so thoroughly as to leave him 10 points back in must-win Pennsylvania, his supporters should be angry enough to choke him. Is leaving an inheritance of $2 billion a piece for his kids so important to Trump that he’s prepared to crap away a chance at the White House over it? Can Ivanka and Don Jr not get by on $1.5 billion each instead? For fark’s sake.

As he continues to slip in the polls, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is poised to begin airing his first television ads of the general election starting Friday in Florida, Ohio, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, according to a campaign adviser…

Mr. Trump, who frequently boasts that he beat several primary challengers who spent far more money than he did, has yet to air a single television ad since he clinched the nomination. Mr. Trump spent only $20 million on ads through May—compared with $62 million by Democrat Hillary Clinton.

In the past two months, Mrs. Clinton has spent about $61 million on general election ads, while pro-Clinton outside groups have spent another $43 million, according to NBC News.

Watch below as Conway defines her new role in the campaign. She’s an interesting hire as a complement to Bannon. If Bannon is true to form, his chief role will be encouraging Trump to be Trump, never mind what Paul Manafort says. Conway is a pro, though, with extensive experience in polling. If anyone inside Team Trump has bought into the “skewed polls!” nonsense peddled by some of Trump’s fans, she assuredly hasn’t. She knows what Trump’s up against, which makes me wonder how she and Bannon are possibly going to coordinate the direction of the campaign. If Bannon tells Trump to get angrier and to start attacking the GOP establishment, what does Conway, who knows what the numbers on “temperament” look like, say to that? If Bannon wants Trump to revisit Bill Clinton’s Lewinsky fiasco and Conway concludes that’ll backfire by making women more sympathetic to Hillary, who wins?

My hunch is that Conway was brought in less for purposes of steering the campaign than as a way to show the Republican establishment that Trump is still listening to people they respect:

I hear top ranks of GOP are in "wait and see" mode over new Trump team – Conway ok, but senior Rs are wary of Bannon bc of anti-estab stuff

In other words, unable to re-hire Corey Lewandowski and re-create the poisoned Corey/Manafort dynamic, Trump may have done the next best thing by hiring a “Corey type” and a “Manafort type.” Bannon, the ersatz Lewandowski who’ll “let Trump be Trump,” will be the real man in charge. Conway, the ersatz Manafort, is there to lend a veneer of professionalism to the campaign to reassure GOP leaders. Hard to believe it’ll work at this point, though, with Bannon having even less campaign experience than Lewandowski did and having made many more — and bitter — enemies within the Republican establishment than Corey had. Which is why the RNC is doubtless huddling over their future with Trump as I write this.

Exit question via Ben Shapiro: Why would Trump step on his well-received speech last night by announcing the big campaign shake-up today? Why not announce the new hires, wait a few days for the smoke to clear, then do the speech and let everyone ooh and ahh over it as evidence of a new, more serious Trump post-transition?